“The door is too thick.” The police chief sighed.
“Poor Maya,” said Jerry. “I’d hate to be trapped in there!”
“Let’s try to get hold of a locksmith,” said the police chief. “Not that I think . . .”
The police chief’s dismal thought was interrupted by a loud honking outside. Jerry and the police chief ran to the windows to see what it was.
Outside they saw a tow truck, which was towing a black car.
Behind it was a police car. Jerry and the police chief went outside to see what was going on.
A young policeman jumped out of the police car and saluted.
“Police Chief Randolph Larson?” asked the young policeman.
“That is correct,” said the police chief as he raised his hand in a return salute.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” said the other policeman.
“Well, well, that’s nice. What brings you to Pleasant Valley?”
“I’ve got some people in the police car that I think you are anxious to see,” said the young policeman, gesturing to the backseat of his car with his thumb.
The police chief and Jerry leaned forward and looked into the police car. And there they saw the head of security, Maria Gonzales de la Cruz; the bank manager, Larry Mernard; and a man with curly gray hair who was probably the head teller, Roger Birchfield.
All three looked very angry. And all three wore a new pair of handcuffs.
“We found them on the highway. Their back tire had gotten a flat. And when we drove past them, we saw that they were piling up gold bars by the side of the road.”
“What?” exclaimed Jerry. “Why would they unload all that gold where anyone could see them?”
“They had to,” explained the policeman. “The spare tire was at the bottom of the trunk.”
“Fantastic!” said the police chief. “But if you’ll excuse me, I have to ask you to let me borrow them for a moment.”
The police chief opened the door to the back of the car and helped the thieves climb out.
“The gold is still in the trunk of the car,” said the young policeman. “Shall we start carrying it in again?”
“We have to unlock the vault first,” replied the police chief, and he put his hand in the bank manager’s jacket pocket.
He took out a bundle of keys and hurried into the bank. The police chief tried a few keys before he found the right one. The door to the bank vault opened, and Maya came running out with the piece of gray fabric.
“I know how they did it!” she yelled. “Look at this!”
Maya was so excited that she didn’t notice that they were no longer alone in the bank.
“They hung this gray fabric in front of the vault door.”
The police chief and Jerry gasped, because once opened, the fabric looked just like the vault door. Someone had painted it to match the real door.
“Look at this!” Maya said. “The tacks that held the painting of the vault door are still in the door frame above the actual vault door. The real door was never locked,” she said. “And the film from the security camera didn’t show any difference between the piece of fabric and the real door!”
“Caramba! What a clever kid!” said Maria Gonzales de la Cruz, impressed.
Maya turned around quickly and looked in surprise at the security officer and the other two thieves.
“That was what you were doing when I looked into the bank when the gold arrived,” Maya said.
“But then the bank manager went in and locked up,” said the police chief.
“We never saw—how could we?” Jerry said. “We had a private flamenco performance outside on the pavement. Remember all that finger snapping, Chief? And we didn’t see him pull out a chair and twist the camera above the door either. The only thing we saw were his footprints on the chair.”
Jerry pointed at the manager’s feet.
“Right,” said the police chief slowly. “Now, let’s see if I’ve understood the entire thing . . . This is a pretty tricky case.”
The police chief took a deep breath and started talking. “A few minutes before six, two crates arrive at the bank. The head of security wheels them into the vault. One contains five hundred and fifty pounds of pure gold. And the head teller is hidden in the other one. The security officer hangs up that piece of fabric and then goes out to the manager on the street.”
He cleared his throat and continued. “The bank manager goes in and pretends to lock the vault door, and before he leaves the premises, he adjusts the camera so that it only films half of the door. At night the bank manager and the security officer come back here and the head teller has climbed out of his crate inside the vault. But I don’t understand . . . surely the camera would have filmed anyone coming out of the vault?”
“I would imagine that the cashier was kneeling down behind the fabric door and pushing out one gold bar after another under the side of the fabric that the camera was not monitoring, don’t you think?” said Jerry as he looked at Roger Birchfield, the head teller.
The head teller nodded and looked down at the floor.
“And on the other side of the fabric, beyond the angle of the camera, stood the security officer and the bank manager, receiving the bars and carrying them out to the waiting car,” continued Jerry. “And when the clock struck eight this morning and the camera switched off, Roger was able to take down the fabric, roll it up, and leave the vault.”
“But before you left, you wrote a note that said you’d been captured and held hostage,” said the police chief, wagging his finger at the three thieves. “That was a really mean trick. We were worried about you!”
Finally, when all the gold bars were back in the vault, the police chief locked up with the manager’s key and said, “Now it’s time to take a little walk to our lockup!”
Jerry and Maya remained outside the bank for a while, watching the police chief lead the gold thieves away.
“Just imagine how close they came to getting away with the gold,” said Jerry.
“And what would have happened to me then?” said Maya uneasily, and she shivered in spite of the heat.
“There are risks attached to being a detective,” said Jerry in a serious tone. “But let’s go for a swim now, shall we?”
“Okay,” said Maya. “I’d love to cool down after all this.”
And the next day everyone in Pleasant Valley read in the newspaper about what had happened at the bank on one hot July day:
GOLD ON THE LOOSE
RECOVERED
Once again the young detectives Jerry and Maya have helped justice fight crime. This time, 550 pounds of pure gold vanished from the bank. To make matters worse, it was believed that the bank staff had been taken hostage.
“This was an especially serious case,” explained the police chief to the Pleasant Valley Gazette. “But thanks to a lot of cunning, a lukewarm drink, and an overloaded car, my assistant detectives and I caught the thieves!”
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